“When this ultimate crisis comes…
when there is no way out – that is the very moment when we explode from within
and the totally other emerges: the sudden surfacing of a strength, a security
of unknown origin, welling up from beyond reason, rational expectation, and
hope.”* - Émile
Durkheim
As I discussed in my last post, I
try very hard to keep a positive outlook in Guatemala. This is largely for my own sanity and
for the wellbeing of those around me, but it’s also for you, my readers, who
probably don’t want to read a bunch of online whining. However, there are times, like now,
when being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala just…well, just sucks. And I feel like I would be doing a
disservice to you, and to me, if I lied about that, and only told you about the
more positive aspects of service.
So I’m warning you now that this post is not a happy one. Take comfort from the fact that, as I
am a couple weeks behind in blogging, I can promise you a much much happier
post next time.
I know it’s melodramatic to say
I’ve hit rock bottom. It’s
entirely possible that I will feel worse at some point in my service. But this is the most hopeless and
unhappy I’ve felt so far during my time here, and in this environment of
fluctuating and extreme emotions, that’s saying something.
So what went wrong? I can think of five things that kind of
snowballed to bring me down.
First, in a casual conversation with my two health center bosses, I
learned that they thought my role as a Peace Corps Volunteer was basically to
bring them money (this is in fact pretty much the opposite of what Peace Corps
is about). My health center staff
thought I would be paying for foreign doctor visits, surgeries, vaccines,
medications, you name it. They
were disappointed that I hadn’t brought them any of these things. I explained to them that Peace Corps
does not provide direct funding to the communities with which it works, and
that my job is more about capacity-building. They then asked me if I could find them organizations that
would bring them money.
I fully understand that money is
lacking in my community, and that without appropriate funding it’s really hard
to practice good medicine. It’s
absurd that when someone comes in to the CAP with a head laceration, we send
them back out to the local pharmacy to buy thread for suturing. It’s crazy that we can’t use our
ambulance because we can’t afford gas.
But I also know that we can improve community health using the
resources—largely personnel—that we already have. And it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that the work of
many charity organizations in Guatemala, while producing good short-term
results, has lead to a crippling culture of dependency. The fact that my health center bosses
want me to spend my time here searching for foreign aid, rather than working on
local capacity-building, makes me wonder why they requested a Peace Corps
Volunteer in the first place. It
also makes me worry that I don’t have their full support for my project.
After this illuminating chat, I had
to draft and submit my semiannual Volunteer Report Form, or VRF. The VRF is basically a summary of what
you’ve accomplished in site, what you’re still working on, and how you feel
your community integration is going.
I had heard from other volunteers and Peace Corps staff that your first
VRF can feel a bit lacking; the slowness of community integration and project
development here means that you generally achieve very little in your first six
months. But I had a few solid
activities to list, and I felt good about my VRF. I knew that some of my comments on community integration
(read: frustrations with my host family and health center staff) were somewhat
negative, but I also felt that they were honest.
Shortly after submitting my VRF, my
Peace Corps boss emailed me with edits and comments. She thanked me for my honesty, and told me that the best
course of action over the next few weeks would be to adjust my
expectations. As the first
Maternal and Child Health Volunteer in my site, she said, it’s very possible I
won’t really achieve any positive health outcomes. Instead, I should focus on integrating as best as I can, so
that integration and project work will be easier for the next MCH volunteer.
I know that my boss was trying to
be helpful—to give me something positive and attainable to work toward. But her words left me reeling. Making the next volunteer’s job easier
is a fine goal, but it doesn’t seem to me like it’s worth two years of my life.
I thought a lot about her words
over the next few days at work, especially when my Pregnancy Club (which, let’s
be honest, didn’t have that promising of a start) completely derailed. I had planned the next session with the
CAP health educators, and I arrived the morning of the meeting ready to make posters
and buy snacks. When I asked the
health educators if they were ready for Pregnancy Club (just trying to make
light conversation, really), they shocked me by replying that they had
forgotten about it, that they hadn’t invited any pregnant women, and that we
would have to reschedule.
I tried to be casual and upbeat
about this little snafu. It would,
after all, give me extra time to make posters and practice my
presentation. We rescheduled for
the following week, and left it at that.
But when I reminded them about the
Pregnancy Club the next week, the educators told me that they had once again
forgotten about it and had a conflicting event that day anyway. This time—and I know this sounds really
over-the-top but it’s true—I felt too frustrated to even bother
rescheduling. That’s not to say we’ll
never have another pregnancy club; I just didn’t have the moxie to try again
that day.
My fourth frustration took the form
of a Peace Corps training on Behavior Change. The training, intended for Peace Corps Volunteers and their
Guatemalan coworkers, took place at a delightfully zany hotel in the department
of Chimaltenango. I was excited to
get out of site/not have to cook my own food/spend time with other
volunteers/learn about how to encourage and measure local behavior change.
Some photos of said zany hotel:
 |
| The bathrooms |
 |
| The bottle-construction exercise room |
 |
| The exercise room proper |
 |
| "Daniel and Gabriel's Forest" (I love you, bro!) |
The other Peace Corps Volunteers
and I quickly learned that the three-day workshop would not actually involve much new information; instead, we would sit through about twelve
presentations we had already seen.
We were supposed to use our prior knowledge to encourage and help teach
the Guatemalans. Unfortunately,
Guatemalans can be a difficult bunch to teach. This is partly due to widespread childhood malnutrition
(which causes decreased brain capacity), partly due to the poor education
system (Guatemalan teachers encourage rote learning, and frequently take random
days off), and partly due to impenetrable culture clashes.
Some examples:
When I asked my two coworkers for
examples of how to do a community health diagnostic (hoping for an answer like
“interview patients” or “compile diarrhea statistics”), they stared at me for
over thirty seconds before suggesting, “We could ask the Municipality for
money.”
My friend Paul and his coworkers,
while planning a lesson on “Warning Signs in Newborns,” got in a fight about
who they would give this lesson to.
Paul thought the lesson should be given to mothers and fathers. His coworkers argued that the lesson
should be given to the newborns.
My fifth and final frustration was
a small run-in with my host dad.
I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping recently, because of the
frequent Muñeca barking sessions at 2:00 and 3:00 am. I’ve been trying to think of a way to bring this up to my
host family, and I seized the opportunity when my host dad started telling me
about a special flower that treats insomnia. I pulled a, “Oh, maybe I should try that.” When he asked me if I suffered from
insomnia, I explained that the dog’s barking has been keeping me awake. He then said, “Well, that’s not what’s
keeping you awake. There are a lot
of barking dogs in the neighborhood, and it’s not ours. Besides, there are a lot of drunks who
walk the streets at night, and if it weren’t for our dog, they would break in
to the house. That dog is keeping
you safe.”
So. All of these things have me feeling pretty down about my
work in Guatemala. I keep asking
myself the same questions: Why am I in Guatemala? Can I achieve anything here? How? How can I
work with people who only seem to want money that I don’t have? How can I motivate educators who rarely
get paid, and who will all lose their jobs when a new president is elected
(that’s how socialized medicine works here)? Why am I in Guatemala, when I could be at home, with people
I love and who love me back?
*Here’s hoping.
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